Nintendo continues crackdown on DS piracy

Nintendo intends to continue a difficult battle against video game piracy by filing a civil lawsuit against NXPGame, an online site accused of selling pirated game copiers.

The copiers can be used to download, distribute and play illegal copies of games for the DS/DSi game units. Even though NXPGame originally agreed to close the site and shut down the business, it reportedly re-launched the site under a new name.

“Using game copiers to play unauthorized downloaded games is illegal and it’s wrong,” according to Jodi Daugherty, Nintendo of America senior director of Anti-Piracy. “Piracy is especially harmful to smaller developers. When their creative works are stolen and copied illegally, some companies find it difficult to survive economically.”

The Japanese video game maker also intends to use new anti-piracy measures for its upcoming 3D DS unit, but didn’t go into specifics regarding the new anti-piracy technology.

In late April, Nintendo blamed piracy for a drastic 50 percent sales drop in a 12-month period in Europe — the same month video game sales plunged, though piracy wasn’t the main reason behind the sales decline.

Similar to other game studios, Nintendo is mistakenly trying to blame piracy when there are more significant problems it must overcome. For example, casual gaming on mobile phones is cutting into the portable market led by the Nintendo DS and Sony PlayStation Portable. The PSP has trailed in the console market, but Sony hopes to bring the PlayStation Network (PSN) and mobile gaming to new Sony Ericsson devices.

I understand piracy is a serious issue in the video game industry. Even more so with rising game development costs, but all of this recent piracy talk from Nintendo seems to be a deflection in blame.

I have a fried (true story) who has a DS and I think pirated games is all he plays on it. We take the train to work and there's a woman who sits behind us and he's put a bunch of pirated games on her DS, too. What I'm trying to say here is that, for once, I'm innocent in all of this.